HUMBOLDT COUNTY — While dispensaries are the most visible part of the local cannabis industry, the major driver of the industry’s growth in Eureka and Arcata is manufacturing.

“From an economic development perspective, leaders ought to know that this is a basically a job-rich industry that the city of Arcata and its leaders have embraced as a way to ensure that Arcata and the North Coast can be viable and profitable for those businesses even though we’re behind the Redwood Curtain,” said David Loya, Arcata’s director of community development.

Arcata currently has over 30 cannabis businesses that are operating in the city while Eureka has over 60 cannabis businesses that are currently in operation. Of those 60, Rob Holmlund, Eureka’s director of development services, said “well over half of those are manufacturing and distribution.”

In the past 24 months, the industry has added somewhere between 300 and 600 jobs to the city, Holmlund said, and more are expected. Arcata doesn’t currently have that number quantified, but Loya said “several hundred jobs have been created thus far and not all of those businesses are up and running yet.”

The manufacturing facilities use the cannabis grown on farms around the county and turn it into a value-added product, including hand creams, concentrated oils and joints, among other things, Holmlund said.

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Not only is the industry creating jobs, but it’s creating better-paying jobs — around $15 to $17 an hour — than what can be found in retail and other sectors of the economy.

“When you’re looking at the creation of jobs, manufacturing is always appealing,” Holmlund said. “Manufacturing jobs are typically skilled labor, typically pay higher than other kinds of jobs such as retail.”

Those skills can then be taken and applied to other businesses, Holmlund said. Loya added that even when the positions were entry-level, involving tasks such as separating flowers into packages, the business owners are really looking to invest in their workers, creating deep organizational structures that allow room for their workers to expand and grow their positions.

“I’m under the impression, from the discussion that I’ve had with folks, that they’re a lot more flexible with work hours than you might find in your typical 9-to-5 jobs,” Loya said.

Beyond providing jobs, the cannabis businesses that are opening in the area are also spending significant sums of money to fix up dilapidated parts of both cities.

The area the city of Arcata designated as the cannabis innovation zone, where cannabis businesses are principally permitted in some areas and conditionally permitted in others, “was just really messed up,” said Brett Watson, Arcata’s mayor.

Before the cannabis businesses came into the area, the cannabis innovation zone was the home to a plant that used a lot of chemicals that spilled into the surrounding area, creating a “pond with nasty chemical water,” Watson said. Since then, Watson said “people have really cleaned it up.”

“It really helped revitalize the area,” Watson said.

If in the future the cannabis innovation zone fills up, Watson said there is definitely room to “expand the area to allow more businesses.”